Research

How can we close persistent gender gaps in political participation? We develop a theory highlighting the role of male household members as “gatekeepers” of women’s participation in patriarchal settings and argue that the answer involves targeting these men. We conduct a field experiment in Pakistan and find that targeting women with a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote campaign has no effect on their turnout in a national election. However, women’s turnout increases substantially when male household members are canvassed to support women’s participation. Households where both men and women are canvassed see the largest increases in women’s turnout and additional increases in political discussion and men’s practical support to help women vote. Using a costly behavioral measure, we also demonstrate lasting effects on men’s supportive behavior in these households two months after the election. Our results address the importance, and tangible benefits, of engaging men to ease constraints that hinder equal participation.

How can we close persistent gender gaps in political participation? We develop a theory highlighting the role of male household members as “gatekeepers” of women’s participation in patriarchal settings and argue that the answer involves targeting these men. We conduct a field experiment in Pakistan and find that targeting women with a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote campaign has no effect on their turnout in a national election. However, women’s turnout increases substantially when male household members are canvassed to support women’s participation. Households where both men and women are canvassed see the largest increases in women’s turnout and additional increases in political discussion and men’s practical support to help women vote. Using a costly behavioral measure, we also demonstrate lasting effects on men’s supportive behavior in these households two months after the election. Our results address the importance, and tangible benefits, of engaging men to ease constraints that hinder equal participation.

Political contact and closeness takes many forms, and while the immediate reasons for the initiation of political contact may be linked to electoral campaigning or the resolution of service delivery issues, contact and closeness also serves as a primary vehicle for the transmission of citizen preferences to politicians and party workers. Using original surveys with 2,150 voters and interviews with 33 politicians, this chapter shows that those who are in contact with or close to politicians have markedly different characteristics from the average voter. To the extent that politicians derive their beliefs about citizen preferences from these forms of contact and closeness, and to the extent that they take political decisions based on their own beliefs about citizen preferences, these findings have important implications for the representation and implementation of citizen preferences. They also demonstrate the critical role that political machines play in transmitting information about citizen preferences up to higher-tier politicians.

On what basis do voters in developing megacities choose their local leaders? We examine citizens’ preferences for local leaders in the Pakistani megacity of Lahore. We conduct a conjoint experiment with 2,150 male and female voters in Lahore to examine the characteristics they prefer in local leaders, and find that these urban voters have preferences for their local leaders that considerably differ from the rural residents and slum-dwellers highlighted in the literature. Co-Partisanship trumps all other characteristics, with education being a close second. Political connections formed on a personal basis lose the importance they assume in rural settings and in informal urban settings. Voters do not exhibit any preference for a leader being born and raised in the community. Contrary to the co-ethnicity preference that is often considered the hallmark of South Asian politics, voters do not prefer leaders from the same caste group as themselves. This paper is the first attempt, to the best of our knowledge, to understand the emergence of local leaders in a formal urban setting in a developing country. 

Under what conditions are politicians responsive to voter needs and preferences? We use survey data from 2,150 citizens and 40 interviews with local brokers and party officials to test whether responsiveness varies by the structure of machine politics and political competition at a local level. We find that there is considerable variation in the extent to which both municipal and non-municipal service delivery improves between the last general election in 2013 and our survey in early 2017. The density and competitiveness of party structures at the local level explain this variation for locally provided municipal services, but not for centrally allocated non-municipal services, such as electricity, gas and roads. In particular, we find that both the density of party networks and the extent to which the number of party workers present in a locality are proportional across parties are both positively correlated with improvements in the delivery of municipal services. In other words, what matters is not only how many brokers are operating within a locality, but also whether or not they belong to different parties that are actively competing with each other for the vote.